To urb or not to urb
Mark Morford nails my fantasies:
...wouldn't it be great to have both, the woodsy small town lodge-like summer pad and the funky City loft, bounce back and forth at relative will, a couple months here a couple months there, with travels to Turkey and Spain and NYC and maybe oh let's say Peru in between.
Wouldn't that be the life, you imagine it briefly and feel it and maybe even visualize the potential, because it seems remotely possible, maybe, someday, if you aim everything just right and plan carefully and enjoy a surprise multimillion inheritance.
I'm currently comfortable with having chosen the city and having the happy problem this weekend of how to choose among Improvised Shakespeare, Pericles, Visible Stories (a comics lecture at the Berkeley Library,) B-Movie Night (a play), Extreme Elvis, the Improv Jam, and more, not to mention working out at the Y, going to the Farmer's Market and my other beloved weekend habits.
But sometimes it'd be really nice to get away from the traffic and the noise and the car exhaust and the people and the busy-ness and breathe some fresh air and be quiet.
Unlimited wealth and teleportation. Basically, that's what I really want.
(Via Cogito Ergo Sumana)
The thing that hits me is how much this sounds like the *old* American Dream in the Upper Midwest--and how many people I know who come from families who attained it. House up by the lake? House in a big enough metro to keep you busy pretty much indefinitely? Yeah. No problem. In some regions, a second house was something only the comparatively wealthy had, but in Minnesota, we have a friend who's the son and grandson of garage mechanics with a lake house. It's How Things Work there, or at least it used to be. And I know several physics professors with no patents at all who have beach houses in Oregon and work inland. That's not even Upper Midwest.
I think the answer is to live in a medium-sized city. But then, I think that's the answer to a lot of things.
Posted by Mris on August 16 2002 15:50